CORRESPONDENCE 305 



the habit of conscious reasoning and intuitive decision, we may suspect that 

 a mental regimen that discourages rehance on such reasoning may aid the 

 growth of the intuitive capacities of the mind. The question therefore arises 

 whether such tendencies and discouragement of reasoning were encouraged 

 by the Quaker faith ? There can be no doubt that this was the case in a 

 remarkable degree. 



Their mental habits certainly gave practice in coming to decisions without 

 conscious reasoning. For instance, if a Quaker had to decide any important 

 matter, instead of reasoning about it, he would pray and then wait for divine 

 guidance. From the secular point of view, what then happened was that an 

 impulse came from the part of the mind outside consciousness and on this 

 impulse he acted. Thus he had practice in arriving at intuitive decisions as a 

 religious duty. An apparently trivial custom in Quaker families, both in 

 England and in America, was that children were never allowed to change 

 their minds. If they said they wanted cake they had to have cake. They 

 were not allowed to change their mind and ask for jam. This custom must 

 have tended to practise them in arriving at definite conclusions. Other 

 examples are given in my paper of discouragement of rehance on conscious 

 reasoning in Quaker society. 



Religious teaching and influence must have played a large part in the 

 mental development of the Quaker child, and in looking for causes of their 

 business ability we must see whether this also may not have had some effect. 

 It led to the use of formal discipline probably to a greater extent in Quaker 

 schools than in those of other Christian sects. For instance, they used such 

 books as the Academia celestis and Robert Barclay's Apology, books which 

 must have been of phenomenal dullness to children, instead of various Latin 

 authors hitherto in use. The frame of mind inculcated by religious teaching, 

 by leading the child to rely on supernatural authority rather than on reasoned 

 explanations of the phenomena of nature, was likely to cause a beneficial 

 delay in its use of conscious reasoning. But a far more important effect that 

 may be expected from religious influence in early life is that it supplies a 

 non-rational or unreasoned basis for moral character. A reasoned sanction 

 for conduct tends to be weaker than a religious sanction because it is liable 

 to be attacked and upset by reason. But if a child is taught a morality based 

 on something in which conscious reason plays no part, if his morality is based 

 on an unreasoning fear or love of something that is beyond his comprehension, 

 then he wUl acquire, not reasons, but prepossessions in favour of being good 

 and against doing Ul. Against such prepossessions, if sufficiently deep-seated, 

 " profane reason " wUl be powerless. How can such prepossessions be best 

 produced ? 



A religion that is rational from the point of view of the child and that 

 can be taught in a way that will stimulate his intelligence is possible. " There 

 is no God but God. Let us loot the unbelievers," is a reasonable creed. 

 " There is no God but God. Let us give money to the poor," is, at first sight, 

 much less rational. To the untutored mind of a child, if he reasoned about 

 it, it might appear as a non sequitur. A paradise full of worldly pleasures is 

 a reasonable proposition. A paradise that offers nothing but religious ecstasy 

 is a far less reasonable idea. But the creed that offers material advantages 

 both in this world and the next, from being good, is far less suitable than 

 the other for producing moral prepossessions. An impulse to be moral may 

 be produced thereby, but it will be based on conscious reasoning, and will 

 therefore remain in that part of the mind where it is exposed to such attacks 

 of reason as usually precede a fall from a state of grace. The religion taught 

 to a Quaker child was entirely different in its plan. A book in my possession, 

 written in the year 1851 by a Quaker lady and entitled Mama's Bible Stories, 

 well Illustrates this statement. The book contains traces of the custom of 

 human sacrifice, of taboo and of fetish, and the conception of the Deity may 



